Stealing the crown from WinZip, the previously undisputed king of file compression apps, WinRAR is a must-have in any modern-day PC toolkit. The application not only includes support for extracting virtually any kind of file compression format, it also boasts a no-nonsense approach to reducing file sizes.

Some will argue that the application isnÃ¯Â¿Â½t as quick as WinZip at compressing files. However, for the small lag in time difference, you end up with a significantly smaller archived file at the end of the process with WinRAR. WhatÃ¯Â¿Â½s more, the application allows you to save files into both ZIP and RAR formats, with a multitude of options for speeding up compression times, or reducing file sizes at the expense of a few more seconds.

Although many newcomers might be put off by the sheer range of features and settings within the program, the interface doesnÃ¯Â¿Â½t take long to get accustomed to, and if youÃ¯Â¿Â½re still really stuck thereÃ¯Â¿Â½s a simple wizard-based system that walks you through the process of extracting or compressing. All this adds up to make WinRAR a dependable utility that performs better than any other tool in its class.

Boasting more compression options, higher compression rates and smaller file sizes than WinZip, WinRAR is now the undisputed market leader in file compression.

x32 and x64 bit versions included!

Languages:

English, Spanish, German

WinRAR supports the following formats:

RAR, ZIP, CAB, ARJ, LZH, ACE, TAR, GZip, UUE, ISO, BZIP2, Z, 7-Zip

Cita:

WHATS NEW IN WINRAR 4.20 FINAL? Version 4.20

1. Changes in RAR compression:

a) RAR general compression algorithm is optimized for better utilization of several processor cores. While some speed gain is possible even in single processor mode, best results are achieved in multi-core environment.

Speed gain depends on data type and average file size. Several cores are utilized more efficiently when compressing large files.

c) RAR text compression algorithm cannot utilize several CPU cores efficiently, so its performance in multiprocessor environment is much lower than for general algorithm. Also its decompression speed is much lower than in general algorithm regardless of CPU number. So we decided to disable the text algorithm by default.

If you need maximum possible compression ratio for plain text data regardless of speed, you can enable the text compression in “Advanced compression parameter” dialog. Press “Compression…” button on “Advanced” page of archiving dialog to access it. You can also change this option permanently in default compression profile;

In the command line mode the text compression can be enabled with -mct switch;

d) “Fastest” (-m1) compression mode also supports several processor cores now. In 4.11 it could use only a single processor core.

2. RAR general decompression algorithm speed is slightly improved, though not to same extent as RAR compression. RAR decompression is not able to use several processor cores, so its performance does not depend on a number of cores.

3. Changes in ZIP compression:

a) now ZIP compression supports several processor cores resulting in noticeably higher performance in multi-core environment. Single CPU ZIP compression is also faster than in 4.11;

b) memory use for ZIP compression is increased to about 15 MB.

4. Recovery volume creating and processing can use several CPU cores resulting in higher speed. Though, typically hard drive seek speed is a limiting factor for recovery volumes, so this gain is most noticeable when working with solid state drive.

5. Now the allowed value for -mt switch is 1 – 32, not 0 – 16 as before.

7. Windows 2000 is not supported by WinRAR and WinRAR self-extracting modules anymore.

8. “Save current settings” button in “Advanced SFX options” dialog is now available only when converting an existing archive to SFX. Options saved with this button are applied only to convert to SFX operation.

If you create or update SFX archive, only SFX options stored in default compression profile are used. Options saved in “Advanced SFX options” dialog are ignored for these operations.